Page 58 of The Reading

Mom shook her head. “You need to stop doing that.”

I grinned. “I will as soon as I have a family of my own,” I told her. “Until then, why should my colleagues with families have to work the holiday when I have nothing going on? If Crystal Gardens allowed you to spend the weekend with me, that’d be different.”

“We’re not prisoners here, Taylor,” she reminded me. “I like living here.”

I didn’t want to have this argument again. “I know, Mom. I’m just telling you why I keep volunteering to work the holidays.”

She reached over and patted me on the knee. “How about we talk about something more pleasant?”

“Perfect,” I chuckled.

“When are you going to give me a daughter-in-law?”

“Okay, maybe not so perfect,” I grumbled, and she just laughed.

Chapter 2

Taylor~

Not being able to stand it anymore, instead of visiting with my mother for only a few hours, I had ended up spending the entire day with her, waiting it out until the end of Rachel’s shift. Sure, now I had a shitload of paperwork to catch up on, and it was probably going to take me until midnight, but I needed answers more than I needed sleep. Besides, I was used to existing on only a few hours of sleep.

Not knowing which car was hers, I had waited by my truck until I saw Rachel making her way towards a white Toyota Camry. Racing over, I waited until she had her door opened before making myself known. While I wanted answers, I didn’t want her feeling trapped into speaking with me.

“Hey, you got a second?”

She turned around, surprise rounding those eyes of hers. “What?”

“I asked if you had a second,” I repeated.

I watched as she tossed her purse and bag in the passenger seat of her car, then turned back towards me. “About what? Is everything okay with Ellen?”

“Mom’s fine,” I assured her.

“Then what’s going on?”

“What’s your problem with me?” I candidly asked. “I can’t seem to think of anything that I might have done to warrant your dislike for me.”

The girl wasn’t a coward. She straightened to her full height of five-foot-three and stared me down with her hard gaze. “It’s nothing personal,” she said, not letting politeness deny her dislike for me. “I don’t think much of a few of my patients’ families.”

“Wow.”

She shrugged like she just hadn’t insulted the fuck out of many people. “While I understand that it’s a huge responsibility to take care of another human being, you’re single with no children. You’re also a renowned doctor and plastic surgeon, and it’s obvious that you can afford the very best for yourmother.”

“Which is why she’s here,” I bit out. “Crystal Gardens is the best around.”

Rachel cocked her head a bit. “Yet, you can’t hire the best nurses around to keep her at home with you?” She looked me up and down, and it dawned on me that this woman really didn’t like me. “Or would that cramp your single lifestyle?”

If I weren’t so fucking angry at her judging something that she knew nothing about, I’d laugh at that. I worked so many goddamn hours that my love life was nonexistent, and my sex life was a sad one by many people’s standards. I was a thirty-three-year-old male with no commitments. Besides work and my mother, I wasn’t obligated to anyone. Still, I was lucky if I found the time to get laid every other month.

“You think my mother lives here because I don’t want to bother with her?” I stepped closer to her. “You got a lot of fucking nerve.”

“Ellen doesn’t even need around-the-clock care,” she went on, defending her low opinion of me. “So, it doesn’t make sense that you would dump her in this place-”

“Dump her?”I choked out incredulously. “Are you fucking serious?”

Rachel threw her arms out by her sides. “What difference does any of this make?” she asked. “What do you care what I think of you? As long as I’m taking good care of your mother, what does it matter?”

“So, you see nothing wrong with judging people? Not liking them for no good reason?” I challenged.

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