Page 14 of A Doctor for Daisy

“I do,” Heather said, grinning. “I’d been a little shocked to hear Luke call me his girlfriend but filled with the warm fuzzies just the same.”

“I would be too,” she said, nodding. “Can I get you a coffee to go with our fudge?”

“Yes, please,” Heather said. The two of them had an after-dinner routine where they had coffee. One of them made both cups and just surprised the other with the flavor. Simple things like that she never had in her life with anyone other than her mother. “I wish Luke could have come in, but he had things to do and is working tomorrow.”

“First tell me how the party was yesterday,” she shouted from the kitchen. “I wish I could have gone. I know Rose isn’t feeling all that well, but she’s trying to hide it. I wanted to try to get ahead on orders for her.”

Her boss was the tough one of the sisters, but this pregnancy had been kicking her butt. Rose was sick on and off and tried to pretend it wasn’t happening or pushed through it. Rose’s husband saw and managed to convince his wife to cut back on work.

Actually, Daisy and Thomas had an understanding that Rose wasn’t aware of. She knew the signs to look for and would gently prod Rose to take it easy. If that didn’t work, she’d threaten to call Thomas. That normally worked. If that didn’t, she’d threaten to call Lily down, which almost always did the trick.

“You’re going to make a great mommy someday yourself,” Heather said when Daisy returned with their coffees. The fudge was on the coffee table and she’d already had it open for them to dive in.

“When my time comes. I need a man first.” Which seemed to not be working in her favor since the last guy she dated turned out to be just another dud and she hadn’t had a date since she broke things off with Ryan after New Year’s Eve.

“The party was great. Ivy was all about being the only one single.”

“I am too,” she said. Ivy was Jasmine’s younger sister. Ivy worked upstairs as the assistant to the Bloom sisters and Daisy found that she enjoyed going out with Ivy now and again, but the younger woman by a few years was kind of needy at times.

“The only one there. She asked Luke if he had any friends or coworkers to introduce her to.”

“I’m sure he didn’t like that.”

“He just said he didn’t,” Heather said.

“You don’t know,” she said. If Luke had any single friends she’d hope she’d get first crack at them.

Nah, she wasn’t one for being set up. Besides, there was another man that she’d been thinking of lately. Someone way out of her league, but a girl could dream.

“He didn’t say anything to me about it. And Jasmine came over and told Ivy to not force it.”

“I’m sure Ivy didn’t care for that either. She’s trying to get Dahlia here,” she said. Dahlia was Jasmine and Ivy’s other sister that lived in Chicago. “She comes and talks to me a lot. I think more so with Jasmine still out of work.”

“Do you think Dahlia will do it?” Heather asked.

“I’m not sure. I try not to ask too much. I think Ivy just likes to vent and then she is lonely too. I guess I can see her side of it. I mean, I’ve got you.”

Heather took a big bite of her fudge and almost seemed to stop in thought. “Are you worried you won’t have me now?”

“No,” she lied. “It’s not like that. Don’t think it. I’m just saying when I moved here I didn’t know anyone and it would have been so much harder if I didn’t have you. You know what it’s like.”

“I do,” Heather said. “But it didn’t bother me as much.”

When Daisy first moved here, she wanted to go out more and Heather was the homebody. Daisy’s friend Mindy was still around then and they’d go out, but Mindy moved and by then Ivy was here and the two of them would go out too.

Then little by little she started to realize there was something to be said about being at home with someone you connected with.

Not a man. But a person.

She had that with Heather and found she was out trying too hard to find a man or something she’d never had in life. Something she never witnessed with her mother either.

That was when she started to accept that she had to do what made her feel the most comfortable.

She’d had her one big scare when she was younger that she’d never told anyone about and she’d sworn to never let it happen again.

Yet she still found herself looking for someone to fill a void in her life and wasn’t sure why.

“I get it,” she said. “I talk to my mom a lot still. I mean I miss her. She didn’t want me to take this job, but I figured it was time to move on.”

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