Page 11 of Just One Chance
Avery hesitated long enough that David quickly backpedaled out of his offer. “Sorry. I should let you get back to work. You’ve already given me your entire morning.”
That much was true, but Averydidhave to eat. “No, that’s not it. I’d love to have lunch. Just not here.”
What was she doing? She sounded like she was flirting. She didnotmeanto be flirting.
David’s expression brightened. The man’s face was easier to read than a giant billboard on the side of the highway. “Did you have somewhere else in mind?”
She should back out. Fake a phone call.Something.She was definitely giving him the wrong impression. “There’s a little restaurant down the street that I really love,” Avery heard herself say. “It’s not far if you don’t mind the walk.”
David smiled, the first full smile she’d seen from him all day. “Lead the way.”
David liked her.
Avery didn’t need to be as smart as he was to figure that much out.
On the one hand, she loved the attention. Which must be why she’d agreed to go to lunch in the first place. But she really didn’t want to lead him on.
Avery didn’t spend a ton of time sitting around imagining the guy she hoped to fall in love with. If anything, she avoided the subject whenever possible. But she was pretty sure David wasn’t that guy. Sure, he was easy to talk to, but she didn’t think they had a lot in common. Avery was Charleston born and bred, Lowcountry to her very core. She lived for the salt and sand, for marshy tide waters and hot, humid summers. She spent her free time paddle boarding. Sailing. Eating really good seafood.
She glanced at the menu, suddenly wondering what David would pick. The waiter approached and she ordered the scallops—shealwaysordered the scallops—and waited with curiosity while David studied the menu. “I’ll have the shrimp and grits,” he said, folding his menu.
Avery hid her smile behind her napkin. Maybe she could give him a few points for that. But everything else? David was about as Lowcountry as a winter snowstorm.
“So tell me about growing up in Chicago,” she said later, after they’d finished most of their meal.
David shrugged. “What would you like to know?”
“What did you do in your free time? Tell me about teenage David.”
He grimaced. “I’m a bad example of the typical Chicago teenager. I mostly just . . . studied.”
“That’s right. College at sixteen, right? That’s intense.”
He shrugged. “It was. I didn’t have a lot of free time.”
“What about summers?”
“I took classes through the summer.”
“Good grief, Dave. You didn’t do anything fun?”
His jaw tightened, likely from her use of the nickname she really thought suited him no matter what he said, but he didn’t correct her. “I was focused on becoming a doctor. It probably makes me sound boring, but I was pretty single-minded.” He hesitated, then went on. “I know for a lot of people work is just something they do from nine to five. Something to pay the bills. It isn’t like that for me. The science of medicine, of how our bodies work and how medicine can do so much to keep them working—it’s my passion.”
He held Avery’s gaze, his blue eyes bright and focused, until she dropped her eyes to the table. Did he look ateveryonewith such intensity? She cleared her throat. “I think that’s really amazing. It must make your work really meaningful.”
He nodded. “It does.”
“So why emergency medicine?” Avery asked.
David pursed his lips, a tiny wrinkle appearing between his brows. “I know this is going to sound hard to believe,” he said, his eyes lifting with humor, “based on how smooth I’ve been in my encounters with you, but I don’t generally get ruffled in stressful situations. In the ER, you’re constantly making decisions and there isn’t always time to second guess yourself. I learned in med school I have a knack for that kind of quick, on-your-feet thinking.”
Avery suppressed her laugh, but she couldn’t completely hide her smile. The way David had bumbled his way through giving her coffee that morning flashed through her mind.Thiswas a guy making split second decisions under extreme pressure?
“I know,” David said, clearly reading her amusement. “It’s hard to believe. But I know a lot more about medicine than I do about women. I don’t have a reason to doubt myself when I’m at work, but I have every reason to doubt myself in social situations.”
“I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit,” Avery said. “You’ve done fine today.”
“Only because you’ve made it so easy. Plus, it took me four days to talk myself into coming in the first place, and I changed clothes half a dozen times before leaving my house. My friend, Lucy—she’s another doctor in the ER—decided I needed a makeover and made her husband go shopping for me. I have all these new clothes and I don’t have any idea how to wear any of them.”
