Page 49 of Back in the Saddle

‘You’re many things, Hunter, but you’re not mysterious or sneaky. In fact, you’re probably the most honest and no-nonsense person I’ve ever met.’

‘I feel like there’s a compliment somewhere in there … Never mind, I’ll just take it as one.’

‘You should.’ She put her hand on his forearm. ‘But why was she excited? It wasn’t a particularly interesting lab. In fact, if I’d had to do four years of college the way you do ithere, I’m not sure I’d have had enough motivation to carry on with medical school afterwards.’

‘Oh, Meg’s a massive science geek. I think she’s thinking of medical school now, but she also wanted to be a forensic scientist, an anthropologist, a biochemist. You can see the breadth of things that’d interest her. But no, it wasn’t the lab that caused the excitement. It was you.’

She pushed away from him, sitting up in shock. ‘Me? But I didn’t do anything exciting.’

‘I think it was more just because you’re you.’

She raised her eyebrows dubiously.

‘No, honestly. I don’t think you know how amazing you are,’ he added.

She scoffed dismissively, shaking her head.

Before she had a chance to cut in and start denying it, he said, ‘You are, Caroline. You said I’m the most honest person you’ve met. Well, you’re authentic, passionate, and intelligent. I know it sounds cliché. But it’s true.’ He smiled at her earnestly.

‘What did they put in this pizza? You’re talking nonsense.’

He laughed. ‘I hope there comes a day when you can see how wonderful you are. Don’t respond, just file it in your mind for later,’ he added quickly, seeing that she was opening her mouth to argue.

She closed it and continued wordlessly looking at him.

‘Anyway, Meg wants to meet you. I know we talked about not meeting the entire family, but Meg’s Meg. We’ve always been very close, and I feel like spending time with people who seem to inspire her would do her good, especially now …’

He could feel the unspoken words ‘that our dad is probably dying’ hang between them. The truth was that one night when they were texting, Hunter had floated the idea of her staying over for dinner at the ranch. She’d said she wanted to comeback and get into a saddle, and he was trying to be nice. Caroline had said she appreciated the thought, but it was probably better if they stuck to horse riding when they were at the ranch. On one hand, he was pleased – his mother would not stop nagging him if he brought Caroline for dinner. But, somehow, he was also a little bit disappointed. Even though he kept telling himself they weren’t really dating.

‘OK. When do you want me to meet her?’

‘I don’t know. No rush, just a thought for another day.’

Caroline nodded, finishing her lemonade and kissing him softly on the cheek. The simplicity and intimacy of this gesture surprised him, but he tried not to let it show on his face.

She jumped off the stool and threw the strap of her mustard yellow handbag over her shoulder. ‘Sounds good.’

And with that, he followed suit.

They exited the pizzeria, arm in arm, into the cloudy end-of-August night.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Caroline

The corners of Caroline’s mouth twitched as she forced a smile to see off another potential study participant.

‘And that’s us all done. Thank you very much for your time, Mrs Cortez. We’ll be in touch after analysing the results.’

She put her forehead against the door after closing it behind Mrs Cortez. Even though it was just Tuesday afternoon, it already felt like she’d been here all week. She had spent the day interviewing new candidates for the Phase III clinical study they were hoping to kick off soon. Phase III trials were the last hurdle new treatments had to overcome before they got regulatory approval to be used on patients. This one was sponsored by one of the big pharmaceutical companies and involved using an oncolytic virus in the treatment of advanced bladder cancer. This new agent was causing waves of excitement in the oncology environment among both scientists and doctors. So far, the results looked very promising, and ifthey could achieve what they hoped for in Phase III … Even though Caroline was worn out by the extra work involved in starting a new trial, she was cautiously optimistic that it meant good news for hundreds of patients.

Her enthusiasm didn’t take away from the difficulty of speaking with fifteen people who had exhausted all available lines of treatment. Caroline knew she should be used to these conversations by now, but it turned out they didn’t seem to get any easier as time went on. Of course, she wasn’t the person making the ultimate decision on whether someone made a good candidate or not. The type of patient who could be included in the study was very strict. You were either a match, or you weren’t.

She took a heavy breath and sat back at her desk, trying to steady her racing thoughts. They were still very much filled by last night’s text messages with Hunter. It was the second week of September. Since their trip to Robbers Cave, they had seen each other only three more times, including twice at the ranch, when Caroline had finally bit the bullet and decided to get up on the horse. Before that, Hunter had come to the city, and they’d had one of the best pizzas in Caroline’s life so far. It didn’t beat the pizza by the slice from the hole-in-the-wall pizzeria in Bologna she had tried during her solo weekend trip two years ago, but it came a close second.

Her lips were just starting to remember the way that Hunter’s lips felt against hers when he’d kissed her goodnight before they’d exited the barn last night, after making sure no one else was around, when someone knocked on the door.

‘Caroline, are you there?’ Amira Singh poked her head round the door. ‘I wanted to ask you about the upcoming congresses.’

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